


who tells your story

by just_nat



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, i go insane over cyberian demons for 2.2k words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:00:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27724499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_nat/pseuds/just_nat
Summary: Cyberian Demons is the worst night of Nastya's life condensed into an 8 minute song and she hates it. She never wanted to play her story out for everyone to see. All Nastya wants, all she's ever wanted since the first time she woke up with quicksilver in her veins is to leave her past behind.My piece for the aurora blackbox zine!
Relationships: Jonny d'Ville & Nastya Rasputina, The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	who tells your story

**Author's Note:**

> All I did while writing this fic was listen to cyberian demons and cry while watching lashings

When Carmilla first talks to her about telling the story of Cyberia, Nastya isn’t sure how to feel. She doesn’t know if she wants to turn her death into a grand story for them to perform on stage. But Carmilla is persistent about it so Nastya hesitantly agrees. It shouldn’t be such a big deal. Most of their performances are a mix of songs Carmilla had written about her own past and things they had seen while travelling around.

It doesn’t feel the same for her though. Jonny tries to help when she tells him about her fears but it gets harder and harder to shake the dread Nastya feels about performing her past. 

"It feels different," he tells her, "when you actually perform. Cathartic in a way." 

It doesn't though. When they perform again, it feels awful. Because suddenly the story is about her and Nastya never got the chance to choose how to tell it.

_ Cyberian Demons _ is the worst night of Nastya's life condensed into an 8 minute song and she hates it. She never wanted to play her story out for everyone to see. All Nastya wants, all she's ever wanted since the first time she woke up with quicksilver in her veins is to leave her past behind. 

Normally she loves performing but right now, Natsya wishes she could be anywhere else. She wishes she could go back to Aurora and curl up in her engine room, finally warm tucked away next to her girlfriend's heart.

Instead Carmilla is right next to her, strumming her guitar as the song opens and Nastya falls into memories. 

_ She's 3, being shown how to access her augmented reality interface by a faceless tutor while her parents are busy- _

_ She's 9 and her parents are always busy but she has computers and lessons and that has to be enough- _

_ She's 13 and her tutor snaps at her to stop fidgeting and focus Anastasia but she's bored of the same lessons why can't she leave the palace to meet her people- _

_ She's 16 and there's whispers of a revolution and whispers about her father's rule and people have started protesting in the streets- _

_ She's 17 and begs her father to spare the protestors lives- she's 17 and bleeding from a bullet in her stomach and she doesn't want to die - she's 17 and takes Carmilla's hand - _

Nastya has been 17 for more than 500 years and she falls to the ground on a stage while Carmilla offers her eternity. She takes Carmilla's hand (again and again and again-) and stands up. Tears are burning at the back of her eyes but there is still a show and an audience so Nastya puts her violin underneath her chin and plays.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The cycle of performances and travelling continues on. They don’t always play cyberian demons at their performances but the times they do leave Nastya an anxious wreck, shaking from flashbacks. She never finds the same catharsis in singing about her past that Carmilla and Jonny do and starts to retreat more and more into her relationship with Aurora as their crew begins to grow.

Then Jonny pushes Doctor Carmilla out of an airlock for the first time, and things start to change. It isn’t the first time any of them have tried to get rid of her, but it’s the first time it sticks for longer than a day and nobody really knows what to do next.

(Jonny had woken her up in the middle of the night, white faced and shaking. “I did it,” he’d said. “I got rid of her, she's gone.” Nastya held her brother tight and didn’t think about how she felt.)

The matter of their captain being gone is pointedly ignored, and the mechanisms continue on to their next show without their creator. Jonny is particularly on edge as the days pass without any sign of Carmilla returning, and he snarls at every little thing with a finger constantly on the trigger of his gun. It isn’t a surprise when he immediately takes off for the closest bar when they land. It’s almost a relief. Ashes goes with him, and Nastya figures they can deal with whatever trouble Jonny starts. 

Of course then he gets arrested, leaving them without a lead singer. Nastya resists the urge to scream when Ashes tells her. She's stressed to her limit trying to manage everyone, and it only gets worse when the actual performance starts. They’d picked up a clockwork figure with the voice of an angel as a replacement for Jonny and it sang beautifully for the first song. Then it had broken or  _ something  _ and Nastya couldn't figure out how to make it work again. 

“This whole thing would be so much simpler if  _ someone _ hadn’t thrown Doctor Carmilla out of an airlock, and I am thinking about Jonny.” Nastya says in a fit of frustration, and of course that's when Carmilla actually shows up. 

The small amount of control Nastya had managed to gain over the situation slips out of her grasp and she feels herself tense. She warily goes along with Carmilla’s script as she takes over the show, dodging questions from Scuzz and Ashes. Carmilla leads them into playing homesick and Nastya follows along despite the dread building in her stomach. 

Cyberian demons is next. Ivy reads out the transmission that calls her Anastasia, and Carmilla  _ smiles  _ from across the room as if Nastya doesn't hate this as if she hasn't hated this from the first time they played it. 

The Toy Soldier plays Jonny's role of Alyosha perfectly even though it shouldn't even know what to say because it  _ wasn't there. _ Nobody was there except for Nastya and she hadn't even understood what was happening until too late so why does everybody get a voice but her?

She hates it, at that moment. It isn't fair but she hates it for not being her brother and for singing so perfectly with Carmilla and for getting along with Ivy and for all the things she can't hate Carmilla for. 

(She never hates Carmilla. She isn't sure if she can.) 

At the end of the song, Nastya stands up. Moves on. Anastasia is not her, not anymore, no matter how many times she has to become her ghost for a performance. 

Things start to fall apart again. Ivy won't stop reciting her poem and she has to figure out what to do with the Toy Soldier still and Carmilla is laughing. All the noise is making Nastya's head hurt and she can't think because of all of it. 

Carmilla grabs onto her in a hug and Nastya can't suppress a flinch. She desperately grabs at the little control she has left, trying to get everybody organized and moving. 

"Nastya?" Ivy says, "Jonny has my gun." 

The last of Nastya's patience burns away. 

"I hate you all!" she snaps, marching out of the room. 

It's not that Nastya means it, but tears are burning at the back of her eyes and she misses Aurora. Misses how Aurora always understands when she needs quiet and doesn't always remind her of what she's trying to leave behind. 

The others follow her out, including the Toy Soldier. Carmilla seems to like it, and Ivy is excitedly trading lines of poetry back and forth with it still so it seems like they're keeping it. 

Ashes falls in step next to her. 

"You alright?" They ask. 

Nastya absently flaps a hand by her side, searching for the right words. "Just… tired I guess." 

"Alright," Ashes shrugs, seemingly unconcerned, "just thought I'd ask, cause you seemed a bit tense during the show."

"Yes well. I'm just tired. Let's go pick up Jonny before he gets bored." 

Ashes gives her an appraising look, but clearly decides not to push it. 

Nastya looks away from them and fiddles with the handle of her gun, running her thumb over the two notches roughly carved into it. Jonny was going to be upset when he saw Carmilla. Maybe Nastya would just let him tire himself out yelling this time. She didn't feel up to dealing with his anger right now. 

Someday, Nastya promised herself, she'd kill her past and make it stay dead. Someday she wouldn't have to bring it back on stage for a show. Until then, she can settle for killing some guards while they break out Jonny. 

~~~~~~~~~

As soon as they get back to Aurora, Nastya ignores the rest of the crew and crawls deep within Aurora’s veins until she's surrounded by mechanical humming. Hidden within the depths of her love, Nastya finally relaxes. The humming of Aurora comforts her and she feels herself beginning to calm down. 

Running a hand along the wall to soothe Aurora's worried rumblings, Nastya says "I'm alright love. It's just that..." she trails off and bites her lip in frustration. 

Aurora's engines continue to rumble in concern, and a small screen of cyberian text pops out of the wall beside Nastya. 

It reads: "Would you like to interface directly?" and Nastya immediately starts blushing. It's not like she hasn't connected to Aurora before but sometimes she gets overwhelmed by how much Aurora loves her. 

Nastya pushes her sleeve back to expose the ports in her wrist and plugs in the wire dangling from beside the screen. As soon as the connection is stable Aurora sends a rush of safety-love-worry and Nastya feels her blush deepen. 

She plays the memory for Aurora, the discomfort of her past being on display for an audience and the way it had reminded her of times better left forgotten. 

"I don't think I like telling my story," Nastya whispers, "but isn't it supposed to help?" 

A gust of hot air blows through the vent to curl around Nastya in a hug as Aurora sends another pulse of love-comfort through their connection, and Nastya presses a kiss to the screen. 

Putting thoughts of cyberia and the cold far out of her mind, Nastya curls up in the heart of Aurora and drifts off to sleep with the pulses of warmth-love-home still echoing in her veins. 

~~~~~~~~~

It's thousands of years of pushing Carmilla out but having her show up at performances anyways, thousands of years of playing nice until somebody breaks and pushes Carmilla out again. An endless cycle. 

Then, Jonny slams the airlock closed behind Carmilla and she finally, finally stays gone. 

None of them believe it at first. It feels different, with Tim brand new and barely coherent interrogating all of them about who did it, but nobody believes she's gone for real. 

They tentatively plan a gig at the port planet Mahon, a place they've performed once before with Carmilla. Jonny says they're on the run in his introduction and Nastya calls him first mate when he says he's captain. There's a weird energy among the band, a tension that builds as the show continues and Carmilla doesn't appear. 

That's when things start to change again. When the show is over and the survivors of the audience have long gone and Carmilla still hasn't shown up. 

"I'm captain now." Jonny says, more serious this time and Nastya doesn't say anything. Just this once, she lets him have it. 

Later, Nastya finds Jonny sitting in a hallway, staring out into the void of space. She sits down next to him and both of them watch the stars for a long moment. 

Without looking away at her, Jonny says "we could rewrite it you know."

"What?"

"Your song. Cyberian demons. I know you don't like it."

"It's not-" Nastya starts to protest, but Jonny shakes his head, still not looking at her. 

"I'm not blind Nastya. I've seen how miserable you are whenever we play it, seen the way you hide away from all of us for weeks after." He turns to face her now and reaches for her hand. 

"If you want, we can rewrite the whole thing. Carmilla doesn't even have to be mentioned at all." Jonny squeezes her hand. "It's up to you."

Nastya isn't sure what she wants. Writing Carmilla out of her story is tempting, and she's certain Jonny would be eager to help. But…

"No." She says. "No, I don't want to tell my story at all. It doesn't wrap up neatly with vengeance in fire like yours or Ashes'." Nastya laughs bitterly. "It just ends with a naive princess bleeding out on the floor and making a choice. So, no." 

"Okay." Jonny says simply. 

Nastya's head whips up in surprise from where she'd been studying a small dent in the floor. 

"Okay?" She repeats incredulously. "That's it? We've been playing cyberian demons for so long, it's one of our most popular songs, and you're just fine with dropping it entirely?" 

"Yes, I am." Jonny replies, "I said it was your choice and I meant it Nastya. You didn't get a choice for so long, and I'm not going to take it away from you. If you say you don't want to play it anymore then we won't." 

"I…" Nastya trails off. What could she possibly say that would express how she was feeling? 

Jonny seems to get it though, shooting her a soft smile. It turns into a wider smirk as he stands up. 

"I'm gonna go convince Brian to land somewhere interesting so we can celebrate the good doctor being gone forever  _ properly _ . You coming?" Jonny holds out a hand, and Nastya takes it. 

She leaves the ghost of Anastasia behind her, and steps into the next adventure.


End file.
